I’m interested in hearing about the personal experiences of living in the USSR without making it a political conversation. Rather, just what life was like, the good and the bad, from a nonjudgmental human perspective.
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I was born a bit after it collapsed, but I grew up in it’s ruins. The people who talk about it will give you this picture:
Everybody stole, but friends shared. You can go to a store and find empty shelves, but go through people’s houses and most people have most things.
Money was largely meaningless. Don’t try to have a 100 roubles, try having a 100 friends instead. The friend from a dairy factory will give you sour cream, the friend from a store will give you best meat and canned goods from underneath the table, stuff not really available to the regular customers. The friend from the shoe supplies will give you a pair of shoes that last years.
Corruption was a way of life. To the older people, it still is.
I was just a kid when I came to the USA so most of my memories are in the context of how different things were after we came to America.
One particularly vivid memory for me is of bananas. My grandma would go on business trips to Moscow sometimes and she would bring bananas back for us. Otherwise the fruits we had were the ones that grew locally, and you had to preserve them if you wanted them out of season. It blew my mind when I came to the USA and I could just go to a grocery store and buy bananas at any time.
There were a few foods there that are harder to find here.
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Buckwheat, which is my favorite grain.
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Fresh peas, not the kind that people eat along with the pod but rather the kind with an inedible pod and big seeds, like canned peas but raw.
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Russian-style rye bread. My family was so surprised that Americans had such an abundance of food but still ate Wonder Bread.
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Kvas, a sweet beverage made out of fermented bread. I think it tastes way better than soft drinks so I’m not sure why everyone isn’t drinking it. Maybe it’s an acquired taste?
Also American cakes are usually terrible and American deep-fried french fries are inferior to Russian pan-fried potatoes.
Edit: one more thing, crepes. They’re not exclusively Russian, of course, but they’ve very common in Russian cooking with a variety of sweet or savory fillings - applesauce, jam, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, ground meat, etc. Sometimes they’re fried after being filled.
Kvas, a sweet beverage made out of fermented bread. I think it tastes way better than soft drinks so I’m not sure why everyone isn’t drinking it. Maybe it’s an acquired taste?
Interesting! There’s a Russian store/deli near my place where I get my loose leaf green tea. I’ll swing by and pick some up to give it a try. Thanks for sharing!
I have found kvas in Russian delis to vary in quality quite a bit, but unfortunately I don’t remember which brands I liked and which I didn’t. Good luck!
I got some kvas and bread. When I asked the Russian food store worker if they had kvas, the guy looked away, slightly smiled as if it was a dumb question, and said, “Of course!” Then he took me to the kvas aisle and showed all of the options lol. I probably seemed pretty silly to him. While I was there, I also got some fresh bread that they made.
I tried the bread fresh, and it was okay. I tried the kvas and thought it was okay too. However, I sliced the bread, toasted it, and put butter on it. I had that with kvas on the side, and it was pretty good! They compliment each other very well. The bread is heavier than I’m used to and has a lot more flavor. I can see how someone that is used to that would think American white bread would seem like crap. By comparison, white bread is lacking consistency and flavor while also being too sweet. To me, the kvas tastes like a soda but less sweet and slightly bitter like molasses. I can see how this would be something someone would like if they drink it often. It has a unique taste that isn’t overwhelming. I noticed that I kept wanting more, where as coke is repugnant after a bit. Overall, I like it and am gonna be eating/drinking this for the next week. Thanks/Спасибо for the recommendation!
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I was born in USSR and it collapsed when I was seven so my memories of it were at the very end when things were tough and scarce. I remember school books that were still about Lenin and Stalin, and we would write essays about Labor day parades and red hammer-and-sickle flags during our English classes, it sounded funny even for us first graders.
Yet, whatever little was available was cheap, we would have deficit problems but not financial ones unless you were trying to buy something that was smuggled into the country, like jeans.
We would take flights to Kazakhstan where my grandma lived, no borders no visas obviously. They lived on their own land there and were much better off in terms of food availability (Google USSR deficit to see what stores looked like).
Then we reached the point when food stamps had to be distributed and it was outright scary. I remember standing by our front door crying, because my mom gave me a bread stamp and sent me to get some bread, and I lost the stamp on the way and couldn’t bring myself to go back home. Eventually I was absent long enough for her to start worrying and she opened the door to go out and found me there sobbing.
